The Trumpeter Swan eBook

When he reached Huntersfield, and the dogs barked,
he had feared for the moment discovery. He was
saved, however, by the friendly silence which followed
that first note of alarm. The dogs knew him and
followed him with wagging tails as he skirted the
lawn and came at last to the gate which had closed
a few minutes before on Dalton’s car. He
saw the Judge go in, Aunt Claudia, Becky—­shadowy
figures between the white pillars.

Then, after a moment, a room on the second floor was
illumined. The shade was up and he saw the interior
as one sees the scene of a play. There was the
outline of a rose-colored canopy, the gleam of a mirror,
the shine of polished wood, and in the center, Becky
in pale blue, with a candle in her hand.

And as he saw her there, Randolph knew why he had
come. To worship at a shrine. That was where
Becky belonged—­high above him. The
flame of the candle was a sacred fire.

CHAPTER IV

RAIN AND RANDY’S SOUL

I

Madge came down the next morning dressed for her journey.
“Oscar and Flora are going to take me as far
as Washington in their car. They want you to
make a fourth, Georgie.”

Dalton was eating alone. Breakfast was served
at small tables on the west terrace. There was
a flagged stone space with wide awnings overhead.
Except that it overlooked a formal garden instead of
streets, one might have been in a Parisian cafe.
The idea was Oscar’s. Dalton had laughed
at him. “You’ll be a boulevardier,
Oscar, until you die.”

Oscar had been sulky. “Well, how do you
want me to do it?”

“Breakfast in bed—­or in a breakfast
room with things hot on the sideboard, luncheon, out
here on the terrace when the weather permits, tea
in the garden, dinner in great state in the big dining-room.”

“I suppose you think you know all about it.
But the thing that I am always asking myself is, were
you born to it, Dalton?”

“I’ve been around a lot,” Dalton
evaded. “Of course if you don’t want
me to be perfectly frank with you, I won’t.”

“Be as frank as you please,” Oscar had
said, “but it’s your air of knowing everything
that gets me.”

Dalton’s breakfast was a hearty one—­bacon
and two eggs, and a pile of buttered toast. There
had been a melon to begin with, and there was a pot
of coffee. He was eating with an appetite when
Madge came down.

“I had mine in bed,” Madge said, as George
rose and pulled out a chair for her. “Isn’t
this the beastliest fashion, having little tables?”

“That’s what I told Oscar.”

“Oscar and Flora will never have too much of
restaurants. They belong to the class which finds
all that it wants in a jazz band and scrambled eggs
at Jack’s at one o’clock in the morning.
Georgie, in my next incarnation, I hope there won’t
be any dansants or night frolics. I’d like
a May-pole in the sunshine and a lot of plump and rosy
women and bluff and hearty men for my friends—­with
a fine old farmhouse and myself in the dairy making
butter——­”